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Rush Limbaugh Mocks Chinese President Hu Jintao<br />
ABC News’ Huma Khan reports: Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh is at the center of controversy<br />
once again, and this new one goes beyond U.S. borders.<br />
The talk show host is taking heat for mocking a speech made by Chinese President Hu Jintao at the White<br />
House Wednesday.<br />
"Hu Jintao -- He was speaking and they weren’t translating. They normally translate every couple of words. Hu<br />
Jintao was just going ching chong, ching chong cha," Limbaugh said, before launching into a 17-<br />
second imitation of the Chinese leader's dialect.<br />
Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the first Chinese-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, said<br />
she was "shocked and appalled" by Limbaugh's comments.<br />
"Calling the Chinese names and imitating the Chinese language was a childish and offensive tactic," she said in<br />
a statement to ABC News. "It is one thing to disagree with a nation and criticize its policies, but it is another<br />
thing to demonize an entire people.<br />
"Over the last 150 years, Chinese in America have faced severe racial discrimination. It wasn’t that long ago<br />
that the Chinese in America were legally excluded from the basic rights given to every other newcomer. They<br />
were called racial slurs, were spat upon in the streets, derided in the halls of Congress and even brutally<br />
murdered," she added. "So when I hear popular leaders in the media, like Mr. Limbaugh, unearth the same type<br />
of derogatory rhetoric I can only think about how far we have come and worry about whether we want to head<br />
back in that direction."<br />
Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., the first Chinese-American to serve in the House, called Limbaugh's recent rhetoric<br />
another example of his "fundamental lack of character."<br />
"What begins as an ugly display quickly becomes as striking for its pathetic childishness," Wu said in a<br />
statement to ABC News. "Mr. Limbaugh proves once again his disinterest in civil and thoughtful discourse, and<br />
in doing so he ridicules one of the world’s oldest languages, insults the Chinese American and Asian American<br />
communities, and disrespects the 1.3 billion people of China."<br />
The mockery is being criticized my many across the country. California State Sen. Leland Yee asked Limbaugh<br />
to apologize for his “classless act” and touted Wednesday’s show as an example of the “bigotry that has often<br />
plagued his commentary.”<br />
"His classless act is an insult to over 3,000 years of cultural history, and is a slap in the face to the millions of<br />
Chinese Americans who have struggled in this country and to a people who constitute one-quarter of the world's<br />
population," Yee said in a statement.<br />
Salon.com editor and blogger Andrew Leonard called Limbaugh’s “bravura performance” an embarrassment to<br />
the country.<br />
“This is just embarrassing,” Leonard wrote. “I'm sure the clip is already surging through the Chinese Internet,<br />
and hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens are contemplating the fact that one of the heroes of the newly<br />
ascendant Republican party is a nativist ignoramus intent on purposely humiliating the current leader of the<br />
world's next great superpower.”